Originally published on eJewishPhilanthropy.
I’m not generally one for alarmism, but one statistic I first learned of from Dan Held of the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto and then recently shared with Haviv Rettig Gur on his podcast has sent a chill down many people’s spines.
There are roughly 400,000 self-identified non-Orthodox Jewish teenagers in the United States, and — get this — only about 5,000 of them attend a Jewish high school.
When I first heard that statistic, I couldn’t shake it. It brought back something I had read years earlier, in a Forbes article about why most family businesses don’t survive past the third generation.
According to the article, fewer than one-third of family businesses survive the transition from first to second-generation ownership. Another 50% don’t survive the transition from second to third generation. The pattern is often summed up by the phrase “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations,” or “the Three Generation Rule.”
The arc is painfully familiar. Pioneers, the first generation, build with sacrifice, urgency and vision. Builders, the second generation, consolidate and expand what was created, with tremendous appreciation for the first generation. But then inheritors, the third generation, frequently encounter the enterprise as something that simply exists, disconnected from the struggle that brought it into being.
This rather depressing framework opens the door to a verse in Exodus 6:8. Here, God promises the land to the Israelites using a striking word choice.
“Veheveiti etchem el ha’aretz asher nasati et yadi latet otah le’Avraham, le’Yitzchak, u’le’Yaakov; venatati otah lachem morasha, Ani Adonai.”
“I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and I will give it to you for a possession, I GOD.”
The Torah does not say yerusha, the more common term for inheritance. It says morasha. Yerusha and morasha share the same linguistic root, yud-reish-shin, but their meanings point in radically different directions. A yerusha, an inheritance, arrives automatically, whether the heir is ready for it or not. A morasha, in contrast, must be claimed. It demands responsibility, engagement and choice. Even when it is granted, it remains unactualized until it is, literally and figuratively, owned.
This is the central challenge of Judaism.
When Judaism is transmitted as a yerusha, an inheritance, it becomes fragile. It is often taken for granted, diluted or abandoned. But when it is taught as a morasha — a possession, a heritage — it becomes a mission. Something lived, carried and renewed.
The way I see it, our obligation is clear: We cannot raise inheritors. We must raise builders.
Treating Judaism as a morasha rather than a yerusha means empowering our children as stewards — equipping them to build on what has been passed down to them and transmit it, enriched and renewed, to those who come after them; to be partners in a living tradition who understand that Judaism’s future rests in their hands. That is the difference between inheritance and heritage.
To accomplish this, we must accept our responsibility to not only tell the Jewish story, but to ensure every Jewish person sees themselves as a bearer of that story — and as someone capable of adding a chapter of their own. That is why the way we tell our story matters.
It cannot be curated, sanitized or reduced to platitudes or sound bites. It cannot be polished or defensive, smoothed over for public consumption. It must be told credibly, passionately, with intellectual honesty and moral seriousness. And that means telling it in full — not only our triumphs, but our fears; not only our miracles, but their costs — and stress the responsibility that comes with belonging.
A story told this way does not flatter or patronize its listeners. It calls on them. It makes clear that peoplehood carries an obligation: to learn, to wrestle, to build, to continue what others began.
If we internalize the history of our ancestors as our own — not as a distant memory, but as a personal mandate — and convey it with real integrity, then the next generation will want to relay their story to others. And they’ll want to reveal it honestly and vulnerably, with conviction and trust.
That is how we endure.
Flourishing is a choice
Decades ago, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik warned that Judaism was not created to fight antisemitism.
Fifty years later, Barry Finestone of the Jim Joseph Foundation echoed that warning in this publication. “The outside forces are always going to be larger than us,” he wrote. “We can’t control them. But the inside — that’s ours to build.”
Author Sarah Hurwitz put it even more starkly: “We can fight [antisemitism], and I think that’s great and I respect that; but I think instead of trying to bail out a tsunami with buckets, we should also build an ark.”
But it was Bret Stephens’ February speech at 92nd Street Y that crystallized the deeper truth. Antisemitism is an inescapable reality, and Jewish flourishing is a choice. Antisemitism demands vigilance, but the future of a vibrant Jewish nation demands vision.
Of course, if Jewish flourishing is a choice, then we must be honest about what that choice requires, and why many families hesitate to make it.
To be sure, the cost of Jewish day school in many communities is astronomical, and many families feel priced out. There are strategic reasons that parents choose top independent schools over Jewish high schools: perceived academic advantages, broader co-curricular offerings or the sense that college counseling is “leveled up” in these contexts. Others remain deeply committed to the American ideal of a strong public education system. And beyond all of that, there are countless individual considerations — financial, cultural, social, logistical — that determine whether parents choose a Jewish high school for their children.
But step back for a moment. If there are roughly 400,000 self-identified non-Orthodox Jewish teenagers in the United States, what would it mean to move the needle even slightly? What if an additional 2,000 to 4,000 students chose Jewish high school? That would not be a revolution. It would be a modest shift. But modest shifts, sustained over time, alter the trajectory of a community.
I’m a big proponent of Jewish schooling. I’ve served as a Jewish high school principal and currently sit on the board of a Jewish high school in South Florida; my wife and I are both products of a Jewish day school and we send all four of our children to Jewish day school. But my argument is not simply about enrollment. It is about literacy. Jewish day school may be the most comprehensive tool we have to cultivate Jewish literacy, but it is not the only one.
So how do we cultivate it?
Building Jewish literacy
As Bret Stephens said at the 92nd Street Y, “We believe in the word and the text and therefore in literacy as a foundation for faith, not a threat to faith.”
There’s that word — literacy. But what is literacy? Is it knowledge of text, knowledge of history? In 1988, the critic E.D. Hirsch Jr. argued for the primacy of “cultural literacy.” In a book of that title, he defined cultural literacy as “what every American needs to know”:
“Cultural literacy is the oxygen of social intercourse. Only when we run into cultural illiteracy are we shocked into recognizing the importance of the information that we had unconsciously assumed.”
I’m sorry to say that the crisis facing Jewish continuity today is exactly this. The vast majority of non-Orthodox Jewish American teens simply do not know enough of their story to carry or add to it. You cannot share a story you do not know. Jewish literacy is not optional. It is foundational.
In that same speech, Stephens said that “the infrastructure is mostly there. What’s missing is the scale.”
Here is where I might see it differently. Yes, there is extensive infrastructure, but what we lack is educational architecture: coordination, urgency and a shared commitment to sustained Jewish learning, rather than isolated moments of inspiration.
We have youth groups like BBYO, which is among the most electrifying Jewish experiences I have encountered outside of Israel. We have sleepaway camps like Camp Ramah and Camp Lavi, where I have had the privilege to teach. We have Moishe Houses and museums, heritage trip providers, JCCs and federations, synagogues and independent learning initiatives. The ecosystem is rich and vibrant.
But rich experience is not the same as deep education.
A teenager might spend a summer at Ramah, or lead a BBYO chapter, or spend a gap year in Israel, each an unforgettable Jewish experience, yet never encounter a coordinated educational journey, or gain any clear progress in Jewish learning. They may feel inspired. They may feel connected. But they may still lack basic literacy: familiarity with core texts, fluency in foundational ideas, confidence in navigating Jewish sources, knowledge of the great heroes or the ability to articulate their own tradition with clarity.
Many of our institutions excel at building community, identity and belonging. Far fewer are designed to build cumulative knowledge. The result is an ecosystem full of powerful moments, but limited depth of literacy.
What we have is not a lack of offerings, but a lack of orchestration — of structured, scalable Jewish education.
Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove captured the problem succinctly in a 2021 essay in Sapir. Noting the embarrassing gap “between American Jewry’s vaunted secular educational achievements and its anemic Jewish literacy,” he argued that the barrier to Jewish practice is practical rather than theological.
Many Jews are not rejecting tradition, said Cosgrove. They simply do not know how to access it. They do not know how to recite kiddush, navigate a prayer service, host a Shabbat table or speak Hebrew.
He proposed something at once pragmatic and transformative:
“In a world filled with instructional TikToks and YouTube videos for everything from cooking to yoga, why not populate the internet with “how-to” content on the greatest spiritual practice of all — Judaism? Such curricula must be judgment-free, affirming the varied paths by which individuals today seek entry into the tradition.”
In that same issue, Daniel Gordis outlined what a culture of shared learning might look like:
“Imagine a Jewish world re-embracing Jewish and Hebrew literature, in which first hundreds and then thousands of American Jews were reading at least snippets of important works, and then conversing about them across communal, congregational, and denominational lines.”
He then pressed the point further:
“What if we knew that the congregation down the block, different denomination, dissimilar politics, a wholly other worldview, was studying the same concepts, the same texts?”
That shared encounter with a common canon, he argued, would strengthen Jewish continuity and cultivate Jewish unity.
I may not share every aspect of Gordis’ or Cosgrove’s vision. My aim is both narrower and more ambitious. Can we help more of the 1.4 million non-Orthodox Jewish teens and young adults become culturally literate Jews?
To me, the answer is yes. And if we can, we must.
The story we tell
At OpenDor Media, we are beginning to build what this looks like in practice: a digital platform called Judaism Unpacked that applies the methodology we developed teaching Israel’s story to millions, now directed with a greater sense of urgency toward the story of Judaism itself.
Over the past seven years, our Unpacked platforms have reached an audience of tens of millions, showing that young people will engage seriously with Jewish history when it is presented with intellectual honesty, narrative depth and respect for complexity. We have explored the 1948 war, the Altalena affair, Menachem Begin and David Ben-Gurion, the Balfour Declaration and the Uganda Plan.
The next step is straightforward. The same tools and platforms used to teach Israeli history — YouTube, TikTokTiktok, Instagram — can be used to teach Torah, Jewish practice, Jewish ideas and Jewish thought.
That means asking searching questions, the kind we often tend to avoid: Does God exist? Does Judaism care what you believe? Is there a Jewish concept of heaven and hell? How does prayer actually work, and why would anyone choose to do it?
It means confronting identity head-on: What does it mean to be “chosen”? Can you stop being Jewish? What does conversion represent?
It means explaining the rhythms of Jewish life without assuming prior knowledge: Why do some Jews not work on Saturday? What is the Talmud? What are tefillin or a mezuzah meant to symbolize?
And it means telling the stories that animate the tradition: Adam and Eve. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. King David. But also: Hillel and Shammai, Honi the Circle-Drawer and the drama of the Oven of Akhnai. And the inward, searching voice of Hasidic teaching as well: the insistence on joy, on intimacy with God, on finding holiness in the ordinary; from the Baal Shem Tov to the Kotzker Rebbe, and in the luminous parables of Rebbe Nachman — the Lost Princess, the Turkey Prince, the Seven Beggars — stories of longing and exile, fracture and repair, that speak with surprising force to modern sensibilities.
This is the architecture of a living tradition: law and legend; doctrine and narrative; a direct encounter with the texts, arguments and stories that shape our moral and spiritual imagination. This is Jewish literacy.
There’s a quote I love from NYU professor Scott Galloway: “The arc of evolution bends toward good storytellers.” In other words, communities that tell their stories well tend to cohere, endure and transmit what matters.
Similarly, behavioral scientist Daniel Kahneman pointed out that “No one has ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.”
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks captured this responsibility with clarity and urgency: “The great questions — ‘Who are we?’ ‘Why are we here?’ ‘What is our task?’ — are best answered by telling a story.” He described the Jewish people as a “nation of storytellers,” bound not only by memory but by a collective responsibility to carry that story forward.
I love what professor Galloway and Rabbi Sacks are saying. But, if we want our young people to tell their story, to bear and bare their story, they need to know their story.
Israel is a chapter, not the book
Let me address something directly. People often assume that because I host a podcast called “Unpacking Israeli History,” my primary concern is Israel education.
Short answer: not exactly. Longer answer: Israel education divorced from Jewish literacy is incomplete. Israel is part of the Jewish story. It cannot replace it.
In the Diaspora, we tend to fall into one of a few approaches when we talk about Israel.
The first is Israel advocacy. Train young Jews to defend Israel at all costs. Arm them with talking points. Defend, defend, defend. And if that fails, label the critics antisemites. I’m kidding. Mostly.
The second is Israel studies. Treat Israel as a subject to be analyzed critically, the way a university course would approach it. Read primary sources. Examine competing narratives. Strive for fairness.
The third (and in my view, the most meaningful) is Israel education. Sounds like approach number two, but it’s a little different, because education doesn’t require you to be objective: Be informed because you care. Because Israel is a part of your story, of your identity, of your world. You’re not responsible for its actions. You’re responsible for understanding as much as you can, staying informed and seeing how you make sense of your identity as a result of your engagement with it.
Real Israel education is about the Jewish students seeing themselves in this story. As many have said, good Israel education is good Jewish education, and good Jewish education is good education. Engaging in serious Israel education is not engaging a defensive posture. It is exploring the story of Israel as part of your identity.
But only as part of your identity.
Israel is not the only aspect of the Jewish project. Peoplehood without broader Jewish literacy is thin. Jewish identity without an appreciation of our story is fragile. Focusing exclusively on Zionism leaves students able to think carefully about Israel, but unable to internalize and navigate Judaism.
We need to teach about Judaism and Zionism, Jewish history and Israeli history, Jewish religion and Jewish peoplehood. And the time to scale is now.
In the words of a recent Sapir article in which Joshua Foer is interviewed by my brother Chanan, we need a moonshot for Jewish literacy.
“Jewish moonshots are high-risk bets on building something that the Jewish world lacks but badly needs, in situations where there’s a real chance of not just underperformance but total failure. They are large-scale, or at least have a path to scalability. They’re non-incremental, and they have a long time horizon to effectuate change. And they can become infrastructure for Jewish life writ large. Birthright was a moonshot. Sefaria, the digital library of Jewish texts, was a moonshot. But we have too few in the Jewish world these days.”
Let’s change that, starting now.
Building the ark
Jewish identity, for many, has narrowed into a state of defense. We are organizing, mobilizing and uniting — but too often only around what we are against. What would it look like to build a Jewish future fueled not by antisemitism, but by a shared story and a shared sense of purpose?
We cannot control how others feel about us, but we can control our ability to share our story. Instead of just telling our story to “save ourselves,” we tell it because it is who we are and what defines us.
Yes, the Jewish people have endured persecution, exile and repeated attempts at annihilation. But our survival has never been secured by power or territory alone. It has been sustained by something deeper: a shared story. Jews persisted because they knew who they were, where they came from and what they were part of.
When Judaism is reduced to ancestry rather than personal identity, the proliferation of Judaism begins to erode. Jewish literacy — knowing, understanding and consciously claiming our story — is not one communal priority among many. It is the foundation of everything.
One of my favorite Talmudic principles is “Tafasta merubeh, lo tafasta; afasta mu’at, tafasta.” If you try to grab too much, you end up with nothing, but if you grab a little, you keep it.
We do not need to solve everything at once. We need to take hold of what we can and strengthen it. Deepen literacy where it already has some traction. Align the institutions we already have around a shared commitment to serious Jewish education. Leverage YouTube and other forms of social media to teach the story of the Jewish people.
If we can, then we must
The Jewish land and the Jewish story are not a yerusha; they are a morasha, a gift that must be claimed and carried forward. To honor that responsibility, to activate the next generation, we must marshal our institutions and creativity, working together across our entire ecosystem.
In my mind, I keep replaying that line from Sarah Hurwitz: “instead of trying to bail out a tsunami with buckets, we should also build an ark.”
That ark is Jewish education, and it is time to build it at scale.
